Log4OM review

[F6DFZ]

Hi to all,

Here is a short review of Log4OM, after having used it for a few days.

First, this software is quite simple to configure and use, a big plus as others are very complex.
Its ergonomics are good and the possibility to use it in concert with other software like Fldigi are very fine.
Rig connection via Omnirig works well, and the DX cluster is very well implemented.

You need to have some power into your PC ; mine is a poor 1,5 GHz Atom All in One, and it's definitely too weak. Log4OM takes 80 seconds to come to life, and when you click on Save and Exit after having edited a contact, it takes 12 seconds to show the list of Recent QSO's.

I have 13000+ QSO in a very formal ADIF file. Transfer went smoothly (Update country box not checked) only one country was not recognized (Republic of South Sudan) ; I edited the QSO's and could correct them.
However there is a bug as the column "Country" in F8 Recent QSO is blank. Country is correct if I edit the contact. If I edit a contact, even without doing anything, its country appears in this column.

ADIF transfer with (Update country box checked) was useless as too many contacts were given a false country by Log4OM. For example, Crozet Island FB8WH was logged as France.

Last but not list I think an important function is missing in Log4OM, the possibility to log off an OM in a QSO with multiple participants. Suppose you begin to ragchew with an OM, a second one comes in the QSO, then a third... This is not a net, you don't know who will come in the QSO. As soon as a new participant comes in, you log it and it appears in the Recent QSO column. If you want to log off a participant, you must edit it, then manually set the End of Time, a cumbersome process. I think it would be worthwhile to implement a way to instantly log off a contact as soon as he leaves the QSO. Perhaps a right click on the line of the contact or a box to click during editing of the contact to register the current time as the end of QSO time.

Many thanks for this wonderful software !

Best regards.

Georges F6DFZ

[IW3HMH]

Hi Georges,
i think the NET control can help you in that situation, even if your one is not a "proper" net, the function to add and remove call at Runtime is very useful and is intended for that.

About country: Log4OM will use DXCC to update your log on import, and set all data based on SCL/CLUBLOG/COUNTRY file.
The Crozet Island is ok, but probably the callsign was badly used from the counterpart.
Can you provide us
CALLSIGN/DATE of the problematic QSO?

[G4POP]

You need to have some power into your PC ; mine is a poor 1,5 GHz Atom All in One, and it's definitely too weak. Log4OM takes 80 seconds to come to life, and when you click on Save and Exit after having edited a contact, it takes 12 seconds to show the list of Recent QSO's.

I have just resurrected my old Samsung NC10 which uses the N270 Atom chip and predates your Atom processor by 3 years (See comparison image below)

Adding a log entry took 1.5 seconds now admittedly this is slower than my I5 machine but I consider this very acceptable.

Editing a record followed by Save & Exit took 3 seconds!

BTW the database it is saving to contains 20,000 (20K) QSO records

Suggest that you might have a problem with your computer or perhaps a defrag and disk clean up is required?

PS- I forgot to add that the program took 21.5 seconds to open on my Samsung NC10!

I have 13000+ QSO in a very formal ADIF file. Transfer went smoothly (Update country box not checked) only one country was not recognized (Republic of South Sudan) ; I edited the QSO's and could correct them.

Please provide the actual call sign - I also think that you might not have updated the country and SCL files?

However there is a bug as the column "Country" in F8 Recent QSO is blank. Country is correct if I edit the contact. If I edit a contact, even without doing anything, its country appears in this column.

The only way I can see this happening is if the ADIF that you imported did not contain the country name - N1MM ADIF does not contain this information - Please email me the original ADIF that you imported so that I can check

For example, Crozet Island FB8WH was logged as France.

FB8WH displays "France" in QRZ.com, HamQTH.com and Clublog lookups and also in the ARRL DXCC listing - Crozet Island should have a prefix of FT/W* and it maps to DXCC 041 whereas FB* maps to France DXCC 277

I think that you have the wrong call sign, do a Google search on Crozet Island DXPediition and check the results

Last but not list I think an important function is missing in Log4OM, the possibility to log off an OM in a QSO with multiple participants. Suppose you begin to ragchew with an OM, a second one comes in the QSO, then a third... This is not a net, you don't know who will come in the QSO. As soon as a new participant comes in, you log it and it appears in the Recent QSO column. If you want to log off a participant, you must edit it, then manually set the End of Time, a cumbersome process. I think it would be worthwhile to implement a way to instantly log off a contact as soon as he leaves the QSO. Perhaps a right click on the line of the contact or a box to click during editing of the contact to register the current time as the end of QSO time.

How exactly would you expect this to be achieved?

.
.

[F6DFZ]

Hi to the group,

Many thanks for the answers from the developers.


I have just resurrected my old Samsung NC10 which uses the N270 Atom chip and predates your Atom processor by 3 years (See comparison image below)

Adding a log entry took 1.5 seconds now admittedly this is slower than my I5 machine but I consider this very acceptable.

Editing a record followed by Save & Exit took 3 seconds!

BTW the database it is saving to contains 20,000 (20K) QSO records

Suggest that you might have a problem with your computer or perhaps a defrag and disk clean up is required?

PS- I forgot to add that the program took 21.5 seconds to open on my Samsung NC10!

I use a MSI AP1900 All in One with a 1,5 GHZ Atom processor. It's very lightly charged, but it's performance are very low. Defrag and disk cleaning are done on a regular basis... I believe that the large screen has a negative impact on its performance. For example it takes about 1 minute and 45 seconds to decode a WSPR sequence. Even SDR# cannot run on it.

I have 13000+ QSO in a very formal ADIF file. Transfer went smoothly (Update country box not checked) only one country was not recognized (Republic of South Sudan) ; I edited the QSO's and could correct them.

Please provide the actual call sign - I also think that you might not have updated the country and SCL files?

Callsign is : ST0R


However there is a bug as the column "Country" in F8 Recent QSO is blank. Country is correct if I edit the contact. If I edit a contact, even without doing anything, its country appears in this column.


The only way I can see this happening is if the ADIF that you imported did not contain the country name - N1MM ADIF does not contain this information - Please email me the original ADIF that you imported so that I can check

The ADIF comes from Win-EQF and contains the country name. If I edit a QSO, I see the right country in the "Country IOTA SOTA" index, and without modifying anything, if I click on Save and Exit, the country now appears in the F8 column.

For example, Crozet Island FB8WH was logged as France.


FB8WH displays "France" in QRZ.com, HamQTH.com and Clublog lookups and also in the ARRL DXCC listing - Crozet Island should have a prefix of FT/W* and it maps to DXCC 041 whereas FB* maps to France DXCC 277

I think that you have the wrong call sign, do a Google search on Crozet Island DXPediition and check the results

The FB8WH QSO is from 13/01/1983 on 20m SSB. If you search this callsign on the web, you will easily have confirmation that FB8W was affected to Crozet archipelagos.

Last but not list I think an important function is missing in Log4OM, the possibility to log off an OM in a QSO with multiple participants. Suppose you begin to ragchew with an OM, a second one comes in the QSO, then a third... This is not a net, you don't know who will come in the QSO. As soon as a new participant comes in, you log it and it appears in the Recent QSO column. If you want to log off a participant, you must edit it, then manually set the End of Time, a cumbersome process. I think it would be worthwhile to implement a way to instantly log off a contact as soon as he leaves the QSO. Perhaps a right click on the line of the contact or a box to click during editing of the contact to register the current time as the end of QSO time.


How exactly would you expect this to be achieved?

Thanks to listen to users ! One way would be to edit the QSO's in the F8 column, and just press a button located at the right of the QSO End line.
This button could be labeled "End Now" for example and would set the End of the QSO to the time when this button has been pressed.
An even quicker solution would be a right click on the QSO in the F8 column. If you do so, a menu appears with items. After the last item (Edit QSO with ...), just add a new item : End QSO with ...

Many thanks for your extreme care of users.

Best regards.

Georges F6DFZ

[G4POP]

OK! Georges sent me the original ADIF file that was generated by WinEQF which contains 13,183 QSO's

For the benefit of all users I am responding here instead of by direct email to Georges

There are two issues with this ADIF file

1. The ADIF from WinEQF does not contain any 'Country names' - This is why with just a straight ADIF import into Log4om there are no country names displayed in the Country column.

2. The QSO's go right back to July 1974 so when an ADIF import is done with the "Update countries in ADIF' box checked our archival and the Clublog Historic call sign exceptions databases do not go back that far so some of the very old Prefixes cause us to change the country to the ones these prefixes refer to now.

So what is the resolution to the problem?

1. Import the ADIF without the "Update countries in ADIF' box checked

2. Go to the QSO Archive manager and check the 'Enable updates' check box

3. Select some records

4. Click the "Field update" button

5. Check the "Update country name from DXCC" check box

6. Click "Execute checks"

Because this bulk update uses the DXCC entity reference number to derive the country the countries should be inserted in the records correctly - PROVIDING THE DXCC REFERENCES WERE CORRECT IN THE WINEQF ADIF FILE?

Due to the slowness of Georges computer I would only recommend updating the countries in small batches, say 500 at a time otherwise Georges computer will be processing data until next year!

Let me know how you get on Georges

[G4POP]

F6DFZ Georges said:
I think an important function is missing in Log4OM, the possibility to log off an OM in a QSO with multiple participants. Suppose you begin to ragchew with an OM, a second one comes in the QSO, then a third... This is not a net, you don't know who will come in the QSO. As soon as a new participant comes in, you log it and it appears in the Recent QSO column. If you want to log off a participant, you must edit it, then manually set the End of Time, a cumbersome process. I think it would be worthwhile to implement a way to instantly log off a contact as soon as he leaves the QSO. Perhaps a right click on the line of the contact or a box to click during editing of the contact to register the current time as the end of QSO time.

G4POP asked: "How exactly would you expect this to be achieved?"

F6DFZ Georges said:
One way would be to edit the QSO's in the F8 column, and just press a button located at the right of the QSO End line.
This button could be labeled "End Now" for example and would set the End of the QSO to the time when this button has been pressed.
An even quicker solution would be a right click on the QSO in the F8 column. If you do so, a menu appears with items. After the last item (Edit QSO with ...), just add a new item : End QSO with ...

I believe that Georges makes a valid point here and looking at he's suggestions I will propose the following to our Alpha Team

Setting multiple QSO end times

1. Select multiple entries in the Recent QSO (F8) screen by the normal Windows click, Shift/click and Ctrl/click method

2. Provide an "End now" button (Just where this might be positioned I am not sure so this might have to wait for version 2) Alternatively a right click on the highlighted entries with an "End now" choice

[F6DFZ]

Hi Terry,

I shall let you know the result with the solution that you proposed.
Many thanks for taking into account my suggestions.

Best regards.

Georges

[F6DFZ]

Hi Terry and the group,

I done what you said.
However, I have the same problem, some countries are not correctly attributed.

Take for example FB8WH Crozet Isld.
If I edit it, it's registered correctly as Crozet Island in the "Country IOTA SOTA" tab, but the "Country" column is blank.
In the "Statistics" tool, it's appears correctly as a confirmed country in the DXCC tab.
So the ADIF information from Win-EQF is correctly read by Log4OM. The only glitch is a blank "Country" column (in fact for all QSO's).
If I "Save and Edit", it now appears correctly as Crozet Island in the "Country" tab
Also, out of ST0R Republic of South Sudan that seems to contain a false information from Win-EQF, my DXCC and LOTW counts are perfectly correct in Log4OM, if don't do a country update from the DXCC list.

However, if I do a country update from DXCC, it now appears as France in the "Country IOTA SOTA" tab, and also as France in the "Country" column.

In conclusion, an update from the DXCC list fills the "Country" column, but information for some QSO's, are false.

The only solution for my personal case would be a bulk "Save and edit" that would preserve the ADIF information from Win-EQF, but would fill the "Country" tab.

Best regards.

Georges

[G4POP]

George's
The country update in the QSO archive manager changes nothing it just looks at the DXCC number and sets the country name according to the DXCC number - It does not alter the existing data so the problem must already be present in the WinEQF ADIF.

Are you certain that you used "Update Country name from DXCC" because I just tried FB8WH and it worked perfectly, see below

"If I edit it, it's registered correctly as Crozet Island in the "Country IOTA SOTA" tab, but the "Country" column is blank. In the "Statistics" tool, it's appears correctly as a confirmed country in the DXCC tab"

It will appear correctly in the statistics/DXCC window because we use the DXCC number for that display not country name

EDIT: The three ST0R QSO's in the WinEQF file do not have any DXCC numbers, you should edit these manually- The ST0R Expedition was Republic of Sudan with DXCC 521 (See below)

There are many QSO's in your WinEQF file without DXCC or country so you have some work to do!

POST EDIT: I have just updated all of the missing DXCC references and country names in your data and came across one invalid entry (Its invalid in Clublog and the ARRL DXCC listing) - 4N4L 23/07/1995 20M contest contact
.

[F6DFZ]

Hi Terry and the group,

Yes, I agree, some data are missing or weird in my ADIF file.

I discovered that as soon as I give or receive a signal report over S9, Win-EQF considers the report as a contest report, and naturally Log4OM doesn't display the report in the F8 column.
Also reports over S9 and a multiple of 5dB are not shown in Log4OM.
I am modifying the ADIF file to correct this two points.

I discovered, as you did that, for an unknown reason some DXCC references are missing. You said that you updated my file, is it possible that you send it back to me ?

4N4L is an operation in Bosnia Herzegovina that was not valid for DXCC.

Again thanks for your help, I discover a lot of weird but interesting things.

Georges F6DFZ